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The rippling of Verschiedenheit: Wilhelm von Humboldt on philology, usage and intra-linguistic diversity
Ist Teil von
European romantic review, 2009-04, Vol.20 (2), p.237-245
Ort / Verlag
Routledge
Erscheinungsjahr
2009
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Taylor & Francis
Beschreibungen/Notizen
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's concept of desynonymization, although it has been said to justify the philological record of usage amassed in dictionaries such as the OED, can only partially explain the late-stage processes that result in diversity within a language. A stronger conceptual alternative to desynonymization can be found in Wilhelm von Humboldt's reflections on linguistic diversity (Verschiedenheit) in his great essay of 1836. He supposed a criss-crossing of conformity and freedom to be the key principle at play in divergences not only among languages and peoples but also among individual speakers. The striving of individuals to join thought and utterance results in the modifications of usage and the varying fates of those instances of usage (namely their perpetuation or vanishing through time). The re-generation of language happens not primarily in the formation of new words or the recovery of old ones, but in daily use, in actions always subject to variation. It is exemplary use that extends the range of a language, not the imposition of a rationally improved vocabulary. The successes or failures of divergent utterance depend upon an ongoing wooing and winning and breaking of agreement about which words to use and understand and do things with.